Summery Mango Salsa and Sweet Chili Rice

This is what I'm eating as I type this. Well, when you read this of course I will be done but know that I am in pure bliss right now.

Cottage cheese with summery mango salsa

We were celebrating my step-dad's birthday last night. His birthday isn't until next week but my brother and his family are going up north and will miss it (lucky ducks) so we celebrated early.

Our menu:
Grilled chicken cutlets with summery mango salsa
Sweet chili rice
Grilled zucchini, peppers, onions, and eggplant
Garden salad (literally)

Summery Mango Salsa

3 mangos, chopped
1 cup pineapple tidbits (drained)
1 jalapeno, chopped (seeds removed because I'm a sissy)
3 or 4 green onions, chopped
1 lime, juice squeezed over the salsa

This was so easy and a real hit. Just combine everything, douse with lime juice, stir and you're done. Cilantro would have been a great addition or maybe mint, but I wasn't sure my family would appreciate either so I left them out. We had this served over grilled chicken, though fish or pork would be a combination too.

This morning, I had this same salsa over cottage cheese for breakfast and it was way better than I had imagined it would be. I have called this a summery salsa but really all of the ingredients are available just as readily in the winter so you could make it year-round.

Sweet Chili Rice

2 cups white rice
4 cups water
1 Tablespoon oil
1/2 cup sweet chili sauce for chicken
1 cup pineapple tidbits (no juice)
1/4 cup green onions, chopped

This was another easy recipe. Basically I just made rice and threw in the flavours, but in case you're new to rice on the stove, here is what I did.

In a saucepan, add the oil and the rice. Cook for 2 or 3 minutes, stirring occasionally so the rice doesn't brown or burn. Add the water (if I was more on the ball, I would have subbed some of the water with the pineapple juice but I didn't think of it at the time).  Add the rest of the ingredients.

Get it up to a boil and let it go for about 5 minutes until you can start to see that the water has cooked off to the level of the rice. Cover and reduce to simmer for 15 minutes. Turn off the heat, but leave covered for a few more minutes.  Then fluff and serve. I didn't realize that the sweet chili sauce had a bit of heat to it.  This was great as far as taste, but wasn't very nice to give my 4-year-old nephew. He didn't complain which I thought afterward was kind of funny. What a kid.